What makes a good permission reminder?

A "permission reminder" is a little blurb in your email campaigns (usually in the footer) that helps your recipients remember how you got their email address. In some cases, it can help prevent you from getting reported or blacklisted as a spammer.

Here’s a good permission reminder:

And here’s a bad one from a campaign that received 300+ abuse complaints:

I wouldn’t go so far as to say this "bad" permission reminder is what caused hundreds of abuse complaints. It’s more of a symptom of a much larger problem. But that’s a topic for another blog post.

Back to the original question: What makes a good permission reminder?

For the most part, if you send true permission-based email marketing, your recipients don’t need permission reminders. They already know how they got on your list. They signed up for it (See Mark Brownlow’s: You’re receiving this email because…yeah I know).

Inevitably, if you send enough email campaigns, you’ll get reported for spamming. It just happens.

When you get reported for spamming, your email campaign is no longer just a newsletter or promotion. It’s a piece of EVIDENCE.

This evidence will be reviewed by a judge. That "judge" can be an email admin at a major ISP, or an abuse desk manager at a spam firewall company, an IT person at a large corporation, or an angry recipient who just likes to publicly accuse companies of spamming by posting their emails on NANAE.

When your email campaign gets turned into evidence, the permission reminder can become a critical factor in determining whether or not you are a "good guy" a "bad guy" or "an idiot" (idiots are the same as bad guys, for all intents and purposes).

3 Elements of a Good Email Permission Reminder:

1. It’s specific

Your permission reminder should be very thorough in explaining exactly how your recipient got on your email list. This is not the time to be terse. At the same time, you don’t want to list all possible ways someone might’ve been added. For example, if your permission reminder says, "You received this email because you purchased something from our stores, signed up online, dropped a business card in a fish bowl at a tradeshow, or signed up with a distributor/partner/affiliate sometime in the past" then it’s obvious that you’re a lazy jerk who just exported all your different databases, combined them into one list, and "blasted" an email out. Don’t be a lazy jerk. Setup differnet lists, and send very different welcome emails to them, each with different permission reminders.

Instead of writing, "You’re receiving this email because you’re a customer" try something more like, "You’re receiving this email because you’re a customer who opted-in for emails when you purchased something from our online store." Or, "You’re receiving this email because you signed up for email specials while making a purchase at one of our stores."

2. It’s polite

Your permission reminder should be written in a way that shows you genuinely care about your recipients’ privacy, and you know that emailing them is a privilege, not a right. Don’t get me wrong. Your permission reminders don’t need to be full of apologies. Groveling is pathetic, and a waste of time. Just show some genuine concern. Sometimes, "concern" just means "details."

I’ve seen permission reminders written like, "This is not spam, as defined by U.S. Legislation ID Code 23298.2342.L32 Docket #ABC123." You know who quotes spam laws? Spammers.

I’ve seen permission reminders like, "This is just a one-time promotion, so there’s no need to report us for spamming." Just because it’s one time doesn’t mean it’s not spam. It just means I only have to report you for spamming one time. Jerk.

I’ve seen permission reminders like: "You’re receiving this email from Acme Widgets. If you don’t want them anymore, unsubscribe." Okay, but I already know I got this email from Acme Widgets, because you said it in the from: line, and your hideous logo is ginormous. The question is, "how the *&%$ did Acme Widgets get my email address?"

Show people that you took the time to write the permission reminder. Because they’re taking the time to read your permission reminder.

3. It’s provable

This is where the "evidence" part comes into play the most. A good permission reminder will include some sort of indisputable proof that the recipient actually gave you permission to email them.

For example, "You are receiving our newsletter because you opted-in for it when you downloaded one of our whitepapers on software engineering."

With this kind of permission reminder, someone (such as an abuse desk admin at an ISP) can ask the complainer, "The permission reminder says you opted in when you downloaded their whitepaper. Well, did you opt-in, or not?"

Sure, people can lie and say they never heard of you. But any time I’ve ever investigated an abuse report, and had a permission reminder like this, the complainer is usually very honest. I get responses like, "Yes, I signed up for their newsletter, but good grief, they keep sending me the same friggin’ email offers over and over. I just want them to stop."

In that case, I don’t have to shut down the sender’s account. I can just tell them to stop being sloppy, and try to send more relevant, updated content.

I’ve also received responses from complainers, like, "Yes, the last guy who had this job downloaded that whitepaper, and signed up for those emails, but that idiot used the sales@ email address here, so now I’m getting these emails. Every time I try to call the sender, nobody answers. I just want the emails to stop." In that case, I can advise the complainer to click the unsubscribe link (or I do it for them).

If possible, you can merge customer information into your permission reminders.

For example, for some of our own MailChimp system alerts, we tell people, "You are receiving this email because you are a registered customer of MailChimp. Your username is ____ and your last login was on ___. "

I still get complaints from people, but at least they know why they got the email. They’ll write and say things like, "I don’t use MailChimp anymore. Please delete my account."

Here’s an example of a permission reminder that lacks trackability (I’ve seen this one a lot): "You have received this email because you expressed interest in our product in the past." Okay, when? How? With whom did I express interest? All this means to me is that you purchased my email address from some affiliate who did the dirty list-aggregation work for you.

Better would be, "You have received this email because you requested more product information from Acme Widgets when you registered your ABC Widget." Ok, I don’t remember signing up for emails, but I do remember buying an ABC Widget, and I do remember filling out lots of forms for rebates and warranty registration. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and just unsubscribe, instead of reporting Acme Widgets for spamming me.

Note: In the above example, it would require Acme Widgets to actually segment their customer lists. Sure, it’s a little extra work, and it would be so much easier to blast out a big campaign to "everyone" instead. But remember #2 above? Showing genuine concern for the recipient? Who’s more important here? What’s a few more clicks in your email marketing system?

The point is, you want to write your permission reminder so that if/when it is turned into evidence, it can boil a dispute down to a simple yes-or-no scenario. Either you have opt-in proof, or not. Done. You don’t necessarily have to merge in the proof, but you should at least imply that you have the proof, if needed. If you can’t do that, the only implication for any judge is that you’re probably sending spam.

Re-cap

So let’s go back to that bad permission reminder, and review why it’s so bad.

To set the stage, the email was sent to members of a non-profit organization. It was a special offer coupon from one of the organization’s largest sponsors (who happens to be a pharmaceutical company). So the only thing recipients saw in the email was a big giant graphic for a pharmaceutical product (assuming the image wasn’t automatically blocked by their email program). No organization logo in the header. No branding of any sort (colors, fonts, graphics, etc). Just a big coupon. Kinda sounds like spam, huh?

Worst of all, the permission reminder did nothing to help. Here’s what I mean:

1. It explains nothing. It says I received it because of my relationship with a certain organization. Okay, what’s the relationship? Can you be more specific? Why not? Probably because you don’t actually know my relationship, do you? In fact, how do I know you’re not just some 3rd party who purchased my email address from the non-profit? Now I’m angry at two organizations.

2. It shows no concern for my time and privacy. They put together an email that doesn’t even include a company logo. Just a giant coupon for a pharmaceutical product (assuming I can even see that graphic in the first place). How much effort do they devote to respecting my privacy? Ten words. And directly below that, they offer a link to view the email online. That’s like knocking on someone’s door and telling them, "Hi there, I just ran over your dog while pulling into your driveway. Anyways, I’ve got these cool encyclopedias to sell you…"

3. It lacks proof. How does one define a "relationship" with a non-profit? Am I a member? Someone who’s donated something? A volunteer? Employee? The word "relationship" seems deliberately vague, as if to cover all possible bases in case they’re questioned.

A better way of doing this would be:

First and foremost, spend some time on the design of this template, for God’s sake. Put the organization’s logo at the top somewhere. Use the organization’s colors. Customize it to show you care.

If the email is just going to consist of a big coupon image from a 3rd party, then put some intro text above it. Something like, "Hello ____ members, we’ve got a very special offer from one of our biggest sponsors, ____. We thought you might be able to use this for ________. Or, make up a bogus (but fun) story, like Simple Shoes did here.

In the footer, include a permission reminder like, "From time to time, we send special offers from our sponsors to all members of ____. We hope you find them useful. If not, you can unsubscribe from our special offers list here."

Most people who send true permission-based email marketing have no trouble writing good permission reminders. It’s not rocket science. It should just come naturally. If you find yourself struggling with your permission reminder, it’s probably a sign that you don’t actually have permission. Perhaps you need to re-introduce yourself. Perhaps you need to segment your list to only include those who did give permission.

Thanks for commenting. If you track usernames and last-login-times in your system, you can pass them over to MailChimp via the API, and incorporate them into your emails. It’s not a standard merge tag in our system, because those are not standard fields most people would use or even record.

If you do this, just make sure to *not* include the *|UPDATE_PROFILE|* tag in your email, because then your recipients will be able to go to their profile page, and modify those usernames and last login times.

This is something we’ll be addressing in MailChimp v4 this January/February. You’ll have “hidden fields” in your MailChimp database.

@Sally – When you buy a list, the source that sold it to you should do the mailings (since that’s where the recipients signed up). And they’re the only ones who’d know the appropriate permission reminder for their recipients. Otherwise, you really have no way to know how those people got signed up. Just one (of oh so many) reasons purchased lists are forbidden on MailChimp.

If the seller of the list won’t send the emails on your behalf, and you need to come up with a permission reminder for yourself, you should be honest. “We received your email address through our partnership with XYZ company.”

For now – I just want to compose a monthly “postcard” email press releases to send out to our clients and prospects (people we have contact with and have received the email address from them). Do I need a permission reminder? I plan on creating it and sending it to myself and then on to the company executives so that they can distribute to their contacts, as appropriate. Perhaps in the future we will organize a larger email blast system but for now that is my goal.

Hiya. I was just reading what you’d said to Karen about marketing lists, when you said it’s “forbidden” on MailChimp, do you mean that I can’t use emails I’ve bought from a list or not?. I’m really new to this and was a bit confused because you then went on to say that you can write another permission reminder..”

We’re a new company and so don’t have any of our own subscribers, so are totally reliant on buying lists at the moment. Thanks!

We don’t allow any 3rd party, purchased, or rented lists into our system at all. In our opinion, whoever originally collected the email lists should be doing the sending on your behalf, since that’s the domain/website that the recipients would recognize.

Sending to a purchased or rented lists is really difficult to do correctly, and is a pretty touchy issue. Typically, purchased lists just generate waaaaay too many spam complaints, so we can’t allow them in MailChimp.

Ben’s comment above about the permission reminder would only apply if you were sending through a system that allows purchased lists, or sending through your own server.

Hi, our Company just changed its name and therefore its website, so many people will have signed up at our old website. Do we need to mention this now in our disclaimer statement to cover all bases?
eg. you signed up at ……com.au or …..com.au

Interesting issues. I’ve got a few mail adresses that I didn’t buy. Since I sell specific things for a specific brand, I checked the dealer site and manually copy/pasted their adresses (hell of a job). What could be a good permission line if I want to use this list?

Since you don’t have their permission, there is none. Though you’re not an evil person, and you’re not a spammer, that would be spam to bulk mail an unsolicited email to emails you ‘scraped.’ Instead, you’d want to individually email those people a personal note (hell of a job again).

If I understand you correctly, you obtained their email addresses while they visited a website or “browsed the net” ? In that case, you do not have their permission. Please do not setup a MailChimp account.

I have people sign up at both art fairs that I show at and on my website. Would I need to have 2 different lists since they are such different places even though they are signing up for the same thing or, could I just include both ways of signing up in my permission reminder? I don’t want to do this wrong.
Thanks for having such a fantastic and informative way of informing users of the best policies to use in their email sending.
Deborah

If they’re signing up for the same thing, I don’t think you need two separate lists. If I were in your shoes though, I’d probably try to somehow mark the people in your database if they signed up from a show vs. website. Just b/c i’m the curious sort. So for example, the form on my website might have a hidden field for “source” with a default value of “from website.” If you want, you can check out this tutorial on tracking signups from multiple locations. I’d also consider using the MailChimp iPad app for taking signups. It’ll store emails locally on the iPad (great for when you don’t have wireless), then sync up w/your MailChimp list when you get back home. Not sure how you’re collecting emails at the fair, but if it’s by notebook and pen, this’ll make your life easier:

Hi Ben,
Thanks for the info and links. Going to read them now. Had a show yesterday so have a number of new readers to enter by hand, at least the ones I can read. I don’t suppose you have a smart monkey who can read sloppy handwriting? LOL.

Hi, I work at an Architectural Firm with a few thousand clients. I inherited my position and we were sending out eblasts long before I got here. I don’t know how we got our list, but I would imagine just from our contact database. I suppose this doesn’t mean they actually opted-in to get emails, but we’ve been sending them emails for a long time. How do you suggest I approach the permission reminder requirement?

Over the last 6 years people have bought things from me through different avenues. With a contact list of 1200 customers the common thread would be their email address or more specifically their Paypal payment. My email list is 100% repeat contact and 0% new customer marketing or recruitment. But to be clear no one opted-in to anything. My wish is to incorporate all the loose ends and redirect my previous customers to my new, personal website. Worst case work scenario would be having to pull each Paypal receipt individually and using it to initiate contact. Love your website, look forward to your reply. James E. Woods

On the one hand, since these people have purchased something from you, there’s a business relationship there, and it’s okay to contact them. But on the other hand, any email address that you haven’t contacted in the last 6 months is risky. Risky because those people will have forgotten who you are by now, and will surely report you for spamming. The more salesy your “remember me?” email is to them, the faster and harder they seem to report you. It’s just like walking up to an oooooold customer at a party. You start with, “Hi, you might not remember me, but…” instead of “I’ve got XYZ on sale, now! What? I have a right to email you! This is can-spam compliant!” (you’d be surprised how many people take the latter approach)

The spam complaints you get from 1-yr old emails (whom you haven’t regularly contacted) just aren’t worth it, to me. I’d ditch all those in a heartbeat.

With the emails that remain, I’d break them into groups, and the groups would be based on risk. The risk is based on “how likely are these people to remember me, my business, my logo, what I do, what I sold them, etc.

Then, send a non-salesy, very personally-written reminder email to the least risky group first. See how that goes. Did you get a bunch of complaints? If so, darn good thing you didn’t send to the whole list. If you didn’t get complaints, progress through the other groups cautiously until you’re up and running and homeostasis is achieved. At that point, it can be hard to maintain regular contact with your list (in order to keep them engaged). That’s why you’ll always find me here on the blog all excited about our rss-to-email related features:

You’re absolutely right, but we’d rather make companies come up with their own. It’s kind of like the difference between giving people a multiple choice option, or open-form essay. Our compliance team learns a lot more about you and your list management when you have to come up with your own. Also, it becomes less personal when people just copy-paste something. Writing your own explanation, in your own voice, would be much more “human” to your subscribers and customers.

I am a massage therapist and looking into doing some email marketing for upcoming specials. I gather email addresses from my clients on their intake forms during their initial visit. I was thinking of wording my statement “As a client of Touch of Health massage, you provided your email address during your initial session. From time to time I will be sending emails with information on upcoming specials or promotions.”

We are about to become missionaries. We need to create an Email list to keep our prayer partners updated with our ministry. Since we’ve been in the business world for a while, we realize the need to have a professional Email systems and that’s why we chose Mail Chimp. So, we’ve gone through our personal contacts and compiled a list of people to send our initial Email to. Do we need a permission reminder? If so, what kind of permission reminder should we include? They haven’t given us permission because it’s our first Email and they’re our personal friends/associates.

Short answer: You should have a permission reminder in every email marketing message you send. It’s not just for the recipient, but for when a recipient accidentally hits their “report spam” button. In that scenario, your email would get forwarded to an abuse desk somewhere (ours too) and a grumpy admin will start an investigation on your list collection practices. Your permission reminder is sometimes helpful for them.

Long answer: Before you worry about the permission reminder, focus more on that very first email you send. I’d send it out personally, from Outlook or whatever your current email program is. That’s the system you use to contact those people now, so that’s the system that their spam filters are used to. Since this email will most likely be plain-text, it’ll also look more personal. In that “invite” email, point to your newsletter signup box. This way, they’ll understand you’re using a 3rd-party system to manage your newsletter. It sets their expectations. Then, as they go through the opt-in process that’s hosted by MailChimp, some of them will be clicking “trust this sender” and other little things to “train” their spam filters to trust the MailChimp server. You’ll get better delivery all around this way.

Once the list is all setup, I recommend looking into our various RSS-to-email options. It’s a great way to just focus on keeping your blog updated, and not worrying about MailChimp. We’ll automagically just send emails whenever you’ve posted new updates on your blog, your flickr, twitter feed, etc.

HI, for the permission reminders. We want to send out some email marketing. Now our email list comes from contact with potential clients or through public sources (company websites, online directories were they post their information) how can we address the permission reminders. not sure how to address this??

Hi Ben,
We are checking out Mail Chimp after a referral from a friend, we haven’t signed up yet because not sure we can use this. We sell janitorial and restaurant supplies. Haven’t done any kind of e-mail or newsletter campaign before. My husband has just collected peoples business cards ( some are vendors some are customers and some are just people he has met). Sounds like we can’t or shouldn’t make a list of these people. So how do we develop a customer/potential customer list to begin with?

I’d email those people separately, such as from Outlook, or whatever your current email program is. Tell them you’re starting up a mailing list, and invite them to click over to your MailChimp signup form and to subscribe. You might even include some incentive to sign up (a free gift to a random subscriber will be announced in each issue, or something like that). Another incentive could be something like a “Top 10 secret tips” for something related to your industry, delivered via our autoresponder tool. If you can make it funny, that’s best. Blendtec made blenders funny: http://www.youtube.com/user/Blendtec

You’re selling janitorial and restaurant supplies. I bet you could have a “10 weirdest things janitors have found at work” or “10 nightmare stories from restaurant owners” series you could build into a 10-week autoresponder. That would be a fun reason to subscribe to your list.

Anyway, that’s a good clean way to build a permission-based, trouble-free list.

Moving forward, stick a link to your signup form every where. Your invoices, your business cards, your website, your facebook page, and on and on.

Hi I just switched my ESP and the system automatically generated the “switched esp form letter”. However I lost the form when I was updating my template. Is there anyplace I can find it? I am using this as well as the permission reminder to be extra careful. Thanks

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Hi, I’m just signing up with mailchimp, and want to “get it right”. I work as a religious non profit, and I regularly use a commercial mail server list to send a newsletter to around 400 friends and “supporters”. It complies with all the conditions. But I now want to use mailchimp to send shorter, more regular updates to a closer few. So I will take their emails, and “inferred permission” from my larger mailing list. Is it okay to do this, or should I use that larger list to send a new invitation to subscribe? Re a permission reminder, is it okay to just say “… you are on my newsletter mailing list”?

By doing that, all members of the new list will have signed up on their own free will. Then, the permission reminder is not so hard: “You signed up to receive these periodic updates for very close supporters of…”

As a realtor we are going to use mailchimp to email flyers about recent properties that go on the market. Our list will be of local agents that we have done business with in the past. Sending a flyer out is one way to get the word out on new listings. How would I word a permission reminder?

This one’s not so straightforward. The best reminder would be something like, “You’re receiving these because you requested them at…” Which means you need to use that “list of people who’ve done business with you” to first send an invitation to receive those listings (and you’d probably get better results *not* sending that initial invitation through MailChimp). In that email, you’d write up a permission reminder that’s right there in your introduction, about your business relationship. Then, talk about the listings, and provide a link to your new signup form.